


All a Blur

by etherealApostate



Series: Gravity Fails [7]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Smoking, Vomiting, domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-08-22 10:48:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8283181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherealApostate/pseuds/etherealApostate
Summary: Dipper and Bill attempt to come to terms with each other, and with their emerging reactions to the moral instability they have experienced together. Do not read this if you are disturbed by depictions of domestic abuse.





	1. Chapter 1

Dipper snapped shut his phone, still flinching internally from Wendy’s groans at the other end. Pacifica had sounded not too distraught, though, he thought – and given past experience, her nerves were usually the first to snap in many situations.

His brow furrowed as he replaced his phone in his pocket. That hadn’t been the case in their most recent encounter. Pacifica had held herself together well. Surprisingly well. And Bill…

Bill had failed him. Bill had failed him and Wendy and Pacifica in the most major way. Bill, the most competent, vicious, _showstopping_ person Dipper knew, had run and hid and failed.

Just like Dipper had failed Mabel.

The thought echoed in his head, isolated and unaccompanied.

He leaned back on the stairs railing and buried his head in his hands. If Bill showed his face up here, he didn’t know what he would end up doing.

Dipper heard the elevator open. Best not to tempt fate. Dipper rose silently and headed to his room as he could hear Bill emerging.

Don’t come up here, Dipper thought, closing his bedroom door tight behind him. Dipper tripped over a stray ball of paper by his bed, then picked it up and started furiously ripping off infinitesimal pieces. He needed time to cool down. Yeah. That was it.

His jaw began to shake as he heard Bill’s footsteps in the hall.

Then the door had opened, and Bill was staring at him, with that big blue eye full of remorse, and a fresh cut swelling on his cheek, and Dipper was grabbing him by his black collar and feeling his fingers sink into Bill’s soft neck.

Dipper should not have been standing, with his damaged neck and his throbbing concussion, but Bill somehow couldn’t fight him off. He simply relaxed a little into Dipper’s grip. Dipper read sad vindication in his face. That was the last straw.

Bill felt completely helpless – was completely helpless. He couldn’t seem to move his limbs as Dipper dragged him by the collar out the door and down the hall, and he only registered a slight sense of despair as Dipper looked at him for one second, then brutally shoved him down the stairs.

Bill tumbled like a rag doll, and barely felt the final impact. He heard Dipper’s bedroom door slam.

Bill picked himself up and reached a hand to his face. His fingers were greeted by the warm, sticky embrace of noseblood. He shivered, and went outside.

It was cold outdoors, and well into the early hours of the morning. The sky was as clear as the pain Bill felt, and the yard was littered with bottles, an upturned table, blood, the remains of the gallows.

Bill slowly sat himself in the rocking chair. He spied a pack of cigarettes and a lighter that someone had in haste left on the edge of the porch, and leaned forward to pick them up.

He wondered if the ritual had worked. He didn’t really know. He’d assumed that going from human to god would have been as instantaneous as his own transition from demon to human. He’d assumed that Pine Tree would simply be… more.

But he wasn’t, now. Pine Tree was broken, or maybe… Bill lifted a cigarette to his lips and lit it. Maybe something inside Dipper had been fixed. Maybe this was how he was meant to be. His heart sank like a weighted corpse.

Bill took a draw on the cigarette, and immediately broke into coughs. How did people stomach this stuff? Vexed, but glad for the distraction (and somewhat glad for the stinging in his lungs, he didn’t know why) Bill took a smaller drag and inhaled clean air with it.

That seemed to work. He exhaled a cloud of beautiful smoke; a miniature of what he had done to Gideon earlier.

Gideon. None of this would have happened if not for him. And to think he had died by something as quick as a _gunshot_ ….

Bill began to growl a little at the thought, but jumped like a frightened cat as he heard the front door opening.

Dipper was there, with red eyes and a scowl.

“You’re not allowed to smoke,” he said. “I can smell it through my window.

Bill chewed his lip for a moment, then made surly eye contact and said, “Close your window.”

“No. It’s bad for you, anyway,” Dipper said, and snatched the cigarette out of Bill’s hand and in one swift movement he smashed the end of the cigarette into Bill’s arm. Bill screamed. Dipper withdrew the now-doused butt and threw it off the porch. There was a smoking hole in Bill’s shirt, and below that a red welt was forming.

“Dipper,” Bill panted. “You can’t do that to me.”

Something softened in Dipper’s eyes – then, “Why does it matter.”

Bill’s jaw tightened. “Because I’m all you’ve got left.”

Dipper opened his mouth to argue. “Wendy—“

“Wendy doesn’t give a shit about you!” Bill yelled, then in a quieter voice, “Or maybe she does, but you’re too twisted to ever be something she could get close to.”

Bill stared for a moment, then continued, picking up speed. “Come on. _I’ve_ figured it out by now –“ he thumped his temple “—normal humans don’t do things like we do. There’s a reason for that. I can feel the chemicals and the emotions and the fucking _regret_ gnawing at my brain every minute, and I know you do too. I never, never had that before.

“Killing people who deserve it, that’s one thing. That doesn’t hurt like _this_. But hurting people you love? That’s – that’s –“ He broke off. Words were beyond him.

Dipper shook his head. “You hurt me.”

“I couldn’t help it.”

“I don’t understand that. You’ve done amazing things. Terrible, amazing things. How could you just…?”

Bill cast his eyes to the ground. “You remember how I was when you found me with the wendigo? Yeah? That’s – that’s what it felt like to think you were dying.”

Dipper was silent.

“There was nothing else I could have done.”

Again, silence.

“I’m sorry I did those things to you,” Dipper said quietly. “I was angry, but I—I shouldn’t have. Being with you, doing the things we do, that’s just, my moral boundaries are so blurred now. I just, I get angry and I don’t think….”

Bill fought the urge to extend a hand to Dipper.

“I forgive you,” Bill said. And his jaw shook before the next words, yet he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I love you.”

Dipper met his eyes, then nodded.

“Come back inside. It’s cold.”

 


	2. The Next Day, Briefly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if I have somewhere to go with this particular drabble, but it felt nice to write, and appends equally nicely to this installment -- so have some depressive behavior with your cup of angst.

Dipper stared out the kitchen window. The coffee mug in his hands was uncomfortably hot, and he could feel somewhere like his fingers were turning red, but he instead continued staring into the lethargic fog that was encircling the Mystery Shack. He could hear, in the same sense he could feel the pain in his fingers, Bill moving around in the bathroom, making his usual loud racket. But out in the fog was something. Perhaps it was just his state of mind. Perhaps it was… was it? He leaned forward infinitesimally. There was something he couldn’t quite see beyond the windowpane and beyond the grey shadows.

Time was somehow absent.

Something tapped Dipper’s shoulder, and he spun, eyes wild, one arm shaking to block his face. Bill jumped back.

“S-sorry,” Dipper muttered, and looked down at the coffee cup (was it still in his hand? Why?) and found that most of its contents had spilled onto the floor. Bill followed his gaze.

Neither of them had said a word since yesterday’s events. Dipper grabbed the dish-drying towel and threw it on the coffee spill. Bill headed out of the house.

As he closed the door, he reached up, past his still-sore nose, to trace the scar on his cheek. It was scabbing nicely. He felt it inside, yet not, like he was a river and it was a floating pumice-rock. Bill hesitated, then grabbed the cigarettes and lighter from the rocking chair where he had left them and headed into the woods.

He barely payed attention to where he was going, looking ahead just enough to not walk into whatever tree trunks appeared in front of him. His feet were a little numb; maybe from the foggy cold, he supposed. There were so many ailments to bodies. If you thought about it, he knew by now, you were always somehow uncomfortable or in pain; there was no ideal physical situation that freed you from them. Three-dimensional physicality was totally, completely overrated.

Bill stubbed his foot on a small boulder. His scream scared at least one bird from the pine beside him. Swearing, Bill cast around, then sat with his back to the stone.

He pulled out another cigarette, lit it, and let the smoke mingle with the fog that was just a few shades paler, purer. He frowned. These things were supposed to kill you, right? How long did he have?

Bill considered putting it out and leaving the pack, but then Dipper’s reaction to him smoking yesterday came back in full force. The fear came back in full force. He stared at the cigarette. A bit of ash fluttered down to his knee. He took another drag.

Slowly, Bill felt clearer and colder; slowly, the cigarette burned out. He smoked it until he could feel the warmth of the fire drawing through the filter and grazing his mouth. Then he put it out on his arm.

 _All your shirts can’t have burn marks in them_ , he thought. _You only have three._


	3. Effection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still in the same time frame/mood continuity as the last update. So, no entire new story format for it.  
> Pretty cut and dry stuff, but yeah.

 

Bill smoked the entire pack of cigarettes, and threw up twice. That should have been enough, but the sickness he felt somehow seemed right. He could see Pacifica’s fascination with it – vomiting, that is; he’d never smelled a trace of smoke on her. Boy oh boy, now there was a speedball of self-destruction waiting to happen. Part of him yearned to seek her out, wind himself around her, and push her on the way to splitting herself open.

Part of him was more preoccupied with the fact that he didn’t even have a nickname for her.

He knew the first part was really an idle thought. Pacifica had done them – him, he reminded himself – some good turns, and besides, it wasn’t like she really _needed_ that little push, was it?

She certainly hadn’t for her father. Bill remembered when he had first visited Pacifica’s mansion for a briefing on his and Dipper’s agreed assignment: the gentle, almost imperceptible bump under the sticky, drying paint. He had run his fingers over it and laughed when the blue had clung to his fingers, and he remembered the look on Pacifica’s face as she had spun. Mouth open, eyes distended in fear. Truly, a priceless expression, and oh, it had looked good on her. Dipper, a few steps ahead, hadn’t even noticed enough to turn around.

He pulled himself back to the present. Better go check on Pine Tree.

Part of him wanted to run in the opposite direction, and never stop.

 

 

“Heya,” Bill said softly. He’d found Dipper in the kitchen, scribbling something on the shopping list. “Going into town?”

Dipper looked up, his eyes lost, and nodded. “Uh, yeah. Wanna come with?”

Bill tilted his head, considering. “Sure.” Then, impulsively, “I need more cigarettes.”

Dipper’s face contorted slightly. _What was he trying to pull now_?

“I’m hooked. I have an addictive personality, what can I say?” Bill shrugged merrily, hopped up onto the counter, and began to kick his long legs like a little kid.

Dipper narrowed his eyes. “Fine. If you really want cancer, fine.” He folded the list up and stowed it in his pocket. “C’mon.”

Bill followed obediently to the old sedan sitting in a corner of the still-trashed yard. The fog had cleared somewhat, but Dipper was still squinting (or maybe that was his contacts, he hadn’t checked his prescription in a while) when he started the engine and Bill tugged the passenger door shut a little too hard.

“Seatbelt.”

Bill gave a look of arch disgust. “I have terrorized humanity for trillions of years. I'll be taken from this hellish form in whatever way I choose.”

“ _Seatbelt_ , Bill.”

Bill rolled his eyes and snapped the nylon belt around his waist. Dipper jerked the car into motion a little too hard. He sighed. The gas pedal always stuck in the winter.

The pines began to roll by. As the fog in the windows crept clear, Bill leaned forward and began fiddling with the radio buttons. The car was a Buick, and a shitty one at that, but it had buttons for every possible radio-related circumstance – in Bill’s mind, a definite perk. He liked being able to feel things under his fingers. He settled on a channel that was playing some kind of heavy, dissonant electro, and sat back twitching to the beat.

Dipper licked his lips, and realized that his still-tender fingers were gripping the steering wheel a little too tight; he could feel the old foam coating crumbling under them. His eyes ran over the dashboard aimlessly, until the gas gauge caught them.

“Hold up – we need gas.” He pulled off onto the gravel road that lead to the the nearest station. Bill stopped fidgeting and turned the music down.

Dipper reached into his wallet and retrieved only cash. Where was his card -- oh, fuck if he knew. Time to go inside. He unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out of the car.

Inside, he saw a sallow old man at the counter. The man’s hair seemed frayed, and his face was run with chiastic wrinkles, like a stubbed-out cigarette butt.

“Fifteen on three, please,” Dipper mumbled, reaching into his wallet. When he looked up from counting the cash, then man’s eyes were gone.

Dipper blinked. Great. Just a great time for some bullshit like this to happen.

The man opened his mouth. No words emerged.

“Are you ok?” Dipper asked, a hint of weariness in his voice.

The man tilted his head. The eyes got bigger – no, the lids weren’t widening; the bone structure itself was expanding to accommodate the great wells of darkness it held.

Dipper took a step back. “Ok, I’ll just, uh, go then.” He moved to leave, then did a double-take. In the center of the man’s forehead, a rune had appeared, shadowy and somehow not there, and pulsing slightly as if trying to make itself more _there_.

Without thinking, Dipper raised his hand to touch the rune. It seemed like the right thing to do. As his fingers neared the insubstance, he felt a slight pulsing in his hand. Closer, closer, closer –

He felt something hard being shoved into his sternum. He looked down. It was the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun.

Dipper looked up in sudden panic – the symbol, the man’s abyss-like eyes, were gone. All that remained was an unsteady and pissed-off  old man, pressing the muzzle of his gun into Dipper’s chest.

“I said, GET YER GAS AND GET OUT!” The  old man yelled, and mashed the gun forward, hard, pushing Dipper backwards.

“S-sorry,” Dipper said, his voice cracking slightly, and hurried out the front door.

Bill was leaned against the car, smoking idly, back to Dipper.

Dipper knew he should snatch the cigarette out of Bill’s hand, because dammit it just wasn’t safe to smoke at a gas station, but he found the pounding in his heart was too vigorous for him to do anything but lean against the other side of the car in defeat.

He had absolutely no clue what had just happened.

Bill looked over. “Something got your goat? You look like you’ve seen a transdimensional demon.” He cackled lightly to himself.

Shaking his head numbly, Dipper glanced up to the station and saw the old man glaring out the window. He reached with shaking hands for the gas nozzle.

“You should, should really put that out,” he said quietly.

Bill raised an eyebrow. He chose instead to walk a few paces away from the pump and its highly explosive contents.

Dipper bit his lip and continued fueling the car. This was bad, very bad. Either he had gotten himself in way too deep with the ritual a few days ago, or whatever he had come close to had driven him summarily insane. He wasn’t sure which was worse. The idea of being trapped in a lying mind, or trapped in a doomed one? No good answer, no good answer.

Fifteen dollars’ worth of gas was not worth a lot in the current economic climate. Before Dipper knew it, he was back in the car, Bill at his side.

“You know, if you’re feeling so under the weather, you should really let me drive,” Bill said, in a half-serious tone.

When Dipper made no response, Bill knew something was wrong.

“Hey. Pine Tree. PINE TREE!” Bill was wound across the seat, his face an inch from Dipper’s. “What’s the matter? What happened in there?”

Dipper opened his mouth to reply, when a shot rang out through the parking lot.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Dipper hissed, and slammed the car into gear and pulled away fast.

Fuck.


	4. The Sickening

Bill cackled softly to himself. So many cigarettes!

He had gotten the same brand as the pack he was smoking, only the cashier had given Dipper something called menthols, as well as a nasty look to Bill while asking for Dipper’s ID. He didn’t know much about human smoking habits. The pleasures of the flesh had appealed philosophically to him in the second dimension, but why learn more about them when they were of no use to him?

After all, it wasn’t since Earth’s 1950s that he’d used substances to seduce a human, and then it had been cocaine.

He began counting his spread cigarettes. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen of the menthols! And another nine of the ones labeled “Turkish Royal.” The brand was called Camel. Bill could appreciate the marketing behind that, the musty exoticism that these people must imbue it with.

He began picking up his carefully collated cigarettes from the table and sliding them one by one into their appropriate packagings.

“Clear that off in a second, dinner’s going to be ready,” Dipper said.

Dinner was a delicacy that Bill had come to know as Ramen. When Dipper laid the bowls down onto the table, it smelled somehow like the water and cylindrical carbohydrates had curdled in the process of heating. Bill grabbed his spoon and dug in with abandon.

Dipper stared at his bowl and began churning the mixture methodically with his spoon. He at last looked up at Bill, who had two long strings of noodle hanging parallel out of his mouth.

Bill sucked the noodles down his gullet and grinned. He didn’t know what was up with Dipper; he had seen something through the gas station window, but why be too scared of a paranoid old man. The simple joy of cigarettes and _food_ – he hadn’t eaten in, how long was it, a day? Two? – was overpowering. He set down his spoon and fished a cigarette from the pack.

Dipper closed his eyes in despondence. “Not in the _house_ ,” he said wearily.

Bill moved to ignore him, then stopped. He changed, lightning-fast, to a serious visage and set the cigarette down.

“You’re not OK, are you?” He asked.

Dipper paused a moment, then shook his head.

Bill pulled his gaze from Dipper’s eyes, instead staring into the early-afternoon sunlight that through the window pervaded the room. He nodded, then stood.

Bill, in one swift motion, leaned across the table and kissed Dipper gently.

Dipper reeled internally. This was a gentler kiss than even a corpse might give.

Bill pulled back after a moment.

“Let me distract you, my Pine Tree,” he said. Bill reached into the nearest kitchen drawer and pulled out a dull butcher’s knife. “Will slitting your throat do?”

Dipper was recovering from the surprise of the kiss, and the familiar fog of recent days was creeping back behind his eyes. He gave Bill a weak smile.

“You really need to learn how to flirt like a normal person, Bill.”

Bill threw his head back, cackling, and in one swift motion pushed the knife into his mouth and down his gullet. Catching Dipper’s gaze, he slowly withdrew the knife (now coated in shining spittle) and licked his lips hungrily.

Dipper gave another smile, a real one this time. “Where’d you learn to swallow knives?”

Bill bent over the Dipper’s hand that was resting on the table and methodically, gently, began sliding the knife in and out of the spaces between Dipper’s fingers.

“C’mon, Pine Tree,” he murmured. “A gag reflex is no match for _my_ prowess.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Dipper said, grabbing the knife by the blade, turning it supine, and sliding his fingers over the edge. “There’s more to it than just avoiding the gag reflex. There are all sorts of internal organs you have to avoid –“

Bill tutted his tongue, and leaned his full weight onto two outstretched palms on either side of Dipper. “Karen from Finance,” he growled.

Dipper decided that maybe he was in the mood to play. He circled one hand around the back of Bill’s skull and ran the knife straight down the front of Bill’s throat. “That was a, uh, thrilling time.”

The blade was too dull to pierce easily, so Dipper was free to dig in hard. The resultant red mark left Bill’s neck in a perfect symmetry of the flesh.

Art, Dipper thought, eyes flicking up to meet Bill’s. “Looked like a real Picasso when we were done with her.”

Bill grinned, his smile its own plane of cubist angles. In the skip of a heart, he had snatched Dipper’s head back to the very breaking point of the neck and held his lover there, suspended and taut.

Bill traced one thin nail up Dipper’s neck and reveled in the bare pulse of the flesh. Dipper’s mouth was slightly open and he flicked his tongue over his teeth in anticipation. He could see the cold hunger in Bill’s eyes as Bill sunk down to straddle Dipper’s knee, hips grinding in. Both leaned in, and now Bill’s lips were hovering so close to Dipper’s – and Dipper broke the balance, hooking one arm around Bill’s neck, diving into him, teeth now catching gently about Bill’s tongue.

As they kissed, Bill’s tongue grew cold, and Dipper pulled away in surprise. He searched his lover’s eyes – Bill was a mirror of Dipper’s own puzzlement – but found nothing; instead, he felt a long, cold rope of darkness (yes, yes, it _felt_ like darkness) winding its way down his throat. It was pulsing – Dipper gagged – he could feel it in his stomach somehow – and then Bill’s eyes widened and Dipper turned, clutching at his own throat.

The smell of dried blood was there in a warm miasma. In the doorway was the shape of a horse. The only thing about it that wasn’t insubstantial darkness was the ribcage. Each ivory rib was glowing, and the whole seemed to breathe. The eyes were as dead as those of any horse.

Bill grabbed the knife from the table and threw it, teeth bared. It flew through the horse and landed somewhere in the next room. Dipper barely noticed: the black rope inside him was now extending in the other direction, forcing his mouth open, and winding inexorably around his neck.

Salt? Iron? Bill was at a loss. He could feel a cold sweat on his back. _Fear_. That was it. He was afraid. He was afraid afraid afraid –

He couldn’t let this happen. He looked down at Dipper and made a decision, but before he could sweep Dipper up in his arms –

Dipper was staring at the table. The rope had ceased to grow. His jaw was wide, as if he were screaming, but everything was static. He felt no fear.

Instead, he vomited on the table. With the rebounding heave of his lungs, the rope was gone, and so was the horse.

Bill looked at Dipper, at the spoiled tablecloth, back to Dipper, down to his own hands.

Dipper wiped his mouth and cocked his head, examining the mess on the table, apparently pleased.  There was nothing left that Dipper could see of the horse or the rope. Only a faint scent of strawberries lingered.

Then Bill realized what had just happened. He laughed shortly.

“Libation, you reckon? Or hospitality? Or…” Dipper wondered aloud.

“Both,” Bill said. He shook his head. “I don’t like them in my house. Should’ve come to the front door like civilized beings.”

Dipper slumped back in his chair. “This makes more sense than the gas station.”

In a mercurial glint, Bill’s eyes were cold. “Yes. You neglected to tell me about that. That wasn't just a crazy old man, was it? You saw something like this, didn't you? But now I can see it too, so....”

“How do you –“

“I see a lot of things, Pine Tree. Especially through large windows. I was waiting for you to tell me if it was just you or just him....”

Dipper swallowed a moment of frustration at Bill's mind games and nodded. “Fair enough. I should have told you. It was a -- hallucination? Apparition? Didn’t know what to make of it, I still don't, I – hey, will you help me clean this up?”

Bill shrugged. “If you really want a repeat of the last time I tried to do laundry.”

One drop of vomit fell from the table’s edge.


	5. Revenge, Served Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, warnings for domestic violence. Warnings for drinking. Have fun kids.

The cold fog had given way to snow, and the Mystery Shack was buried. Drifts piled against the porch and curled into the rocking chairs. A thread of a path was sunken into the snow, cleared enough that your feet would only drive about ten inches into the fallen white. The air was still for the first time since the blizzard had begun; it hung in mute clarity around the heat of the house.

Inside the living room, four figures were arranged in warmth fueled by three geriatric electric heaters. The gathered people were silently hoping for confirmation that the weather would be static enough to facilitate a venture outside.

Pacifica had been given the honor of the old armchair, once the irrevocable territory of Stan Pines; Wendy was sitting on the floor and swathed in a mass of scratchy blankets. Dipper was on the couch, with Bill lying back across it and over him, ankles crossed in Dipper’s lap. Bill’s head was slightly dizzy as it hung in stasis off the arm of the couch.

“Hey, pass me that Fireball, would you?” Pacifica leaned forward in anticipation as Bill pulled the heavy handle from its nest by his side and held it out, but made no effort to get up. Pacifica shook her head and stood to take it. Bill’s eyepatch had slipped over his head, and the milky white of his dead eye shone peacefully in the low lamplight.

Pacifica took a long swig, then another, as Dipper flicked on the television again.

“Ugh,” he muttered, his free hand fidgeting with the end of Bill’s untied shoelace. “Still no signal. C’mon, we need the weather channel….”

Wendy caught Pacifica’s eye, then looked down at the bottle, then back up to Pacifica with puppy-dog eyes. Pacifica grinned as the warmth of the alcohol settled behind her teeth. She tightened the cap on the handle. She leaned forward and rolled Wendy the bottle with a mighty shove.

One arm emerged from Wendy’s cocoon, and the Fireball disappeared under the fabric mass. Her attention was somewhere in the distance. Pacifica, feeling reasonably safe from her gaze, stared briefly at Wendy’s eyes. The older girl was showing the same signs of cabin-fever dishevelment that they all were, with uncombed hair, sleepy eyes, and cheeks still pink from a recent foray to the car.

“Hey,” Wendy said, her voice heavy with glottal fry as Dipper clicked the tv off in dissatisfaction. Pacifica shivered. “Guys. I’m not feeling this sobriety thing. Who wants to get drunk?”

Bill raised a limp arm without looking in Wendy’s direction. Pacifica shrugged, a smile twitching at her lips. Dipper, lost in thought, didn’t even respond.

“Better than anything I’m doing right now,” Pacifica said. “Should we play a game?”

Bill chuckled. “Ritualized poison consumption? I’ve never tried _that_ before!”

Pacifica rolled her eyes. “Good one. How about “Never Have I Ever,” then? –And no sarcastic entries or lies allowed, Bill.”

Bill sat up. “Fine. How do you play?”

Pacifica held up three fingers. “Do this.” Bill followed her lead. Dipper, coming back to earth, blinked and held up his own three fingers. Wendy put down the bottle, scootched closer to the center of the group, and followed suit.

“I say something I’ve never done. If anyone’s done it, they put down a finger and take a sip. Then Dipper says something he’s never done. And so on. First one to get all three fingers down takes a shot.” Pacifica shot a pointed stare at Bill. “A shot _of alcohol._ ”

Bill rolled his eyes. “Yes. Rocket science. With actual rockets.”

“Alright,” Pacifica said. “Sure. I’ll go first. Never have I ever driven over one hundred miles per hour.” Wendy put down a finger and used her free hand to tip back the handle. “Dipper, you’re next.”

Dipper shrugged, then nodded. “OK. Uh…. Never have I ever smoked a cigarette.”

Bill let out a martyred noise and folded one finger down with agonizing articulation. Pacifica put down one of her own fingers.

“Really?” Dipper asked, looking at Pacifica in curiosity.

Pacifica took her turn to shrug. “Ticked off my dad. Couldn’t get away with it much, though.”

“NEVER HAVE I EVER,” Bill broke in, “Taken a bath.” He crossed his arms smugly.

“That explains a lot,” Dipper muttered, and Bill twitched his foot to give him a derisive tap-kick. Dipper, Wendy, and Pacifica all put a finger down and shared a moment of silence, passing the bottle among themselves.

Wendy coughed, swallowed some phlegm, then said, “Never have I ever killed a human.”

Bill raised an eyebrow and put a finger down, leaving his middle finger extended proudly. Dipper did the same in defeat. A small shudder ran through Pacifica’s spine. She caught, from the corner of her eye, Bill’s smile – no, she had to, he would say something, call her out -- and she curled her final finger into a fist.

Wendy looked to Pacifica with a grin, then noticed that Pacifica’s hand was down. Wendy’s brow furrowed, and her head tilted. Pacifica shook her own head.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Bill said, noticing Wendy’s face. “You don’t really think dear old Dad Northwest just _disappeared_ , do you?”

Wendy and Pacifica glared at him in unison. Pacifica felt her throat begin to clench up.

“He—“ she began.

“No,” Wendy said, “I didn’t think that.” Her mouth closed into a firm, grim line for a second – and then she swallowed, and her face relaxed. “C’mon, Pax. Take a shot.”

Pacifica nodded, hand still clenched, and used her other to reach forward for the bottle.

“Hold up,” Dipper said, shoving Bill’s ankles from his lap to stand. “I’ve got a glass in the kitchen. One sec.” He exited. Bill swung himself into a sitting position and leaned forward, his good eye glimmering.

“Had to come out sooner or later,” he said, and half-stood to give Pacifica a friendly slap on the shoulder. She recoiled. “Don’t worry, Blondie, it’ll help your rep.”

Pacifica stared at him in abject disgust, then shook her head and took a swig. The burning hadn’t even begin to subside when Dipper returned and placed the shot glass on the arm of her chair. They sat in silence as Pacifica poured a shot, threw it back, and returned the bottle and glass to the center of their little ring. Dipper stared at it, then took it up and chugged for a solid eight seconds before Bill pried the bottle from his hands. Bill slowly raised it to his own mouth, looked Dipper dead in the eyes, and circled the rim with his tongue before taking his turn, then setting the bottle down by the couch and making a face.

“Ugh,” he said. “I’m going out for a smoke.” He stood, then said to Wendy, “If I freeze out there, Lumberjack, you gotta eat my body before the rest of you all starve.” She wrinkled her nose; he gave a perverted grin and strode out of the living room.

“I think I’ll go with,” Dipper mumbled, and added something about fresh air and seeing how the sky looked.

Wendy shuddered as he exited. There was silence for a moment.

“That’s not the kid I knew,” she said. Pacifica inhaled deeply and shrugged. The alcohol warming her stomach into something fierce. A plan began to gestate in her mind. She slipped off the couch and under the cocoon of blankets sheathing Wendy.

“You should really drink more,” she said. God. That sounded so suspicious. Well, it should, she thought. “It’s a lot less awkward if you get to where I am.”

Wendy tilted her head and gave a shadow of a smile. “Yeah. I guess so. Pass me the bottle.”

 

Outside, Bill was standing ankle-deep in the snowed-over porch, his knees knocking together and his fingers fumbling to draw a cigarette from his last pack. He had just succeeded when Dipper opened the door and slipped into the still frigidity outside.

Bill half-turned. “You out?” Dipper asked.

“Not yet. So sweet of you to ask, though.” He perched the cigarette in his delicate mouth and flicked on his lighter. The flame tickled the end of the cigarette and Bill took a deep draw to get it burning. “I’ve been cooking up a plan, Pine Tree. What do you say we take a short vacation once this snow clears, huh? Road trip. Last I heard, there was a fortune demon in Portland.”

Dipper tilted his head and slung one arm around Bill’s shoulders. Bill shivered, a little uncomfortable, and continued smoking. “I don’t know,” Dipper said. “You know I don’t like it when I don’t know the entirety of your plans.”

Bill shrugged. “That’s it. I’m not a genius any more, Pine Tree. Couldn’t cram everything into this brain.”

Dipper stayed silent. Bill turned his head slightly for a look, and found Dipper’s mouth in a supercilious smile. “C’mon, Bill. Don’t make me torture it out of you.” 

The wind stirred, and Bill shuddered. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and bit his lip.

“I don’t want you to do that to me again.”

“Yeah. So tell me.” Dipper’s arm almost casually slipped upwards until his elbow hung loose around Bill’s throat. “I can’t have you causing trouble while we’ve got guests cooped up here.”

Bill coughed, took another drag. “What, you afraid of a little exhibitionism?” Trying to hide the fear in his voice, he turned fully to face Dipper now. The arm around his neck tightened. Their foreheads pressed close to one another. “Or are you maybe afraid of what I know?”

He could feel Dipper’s free arm tense, probably to go to the knife that the boy kept in his back pocket. Bill wasted no time – he couldn’t afford to – he had to do something, now. He sent a sharp knee into Dipper’s crotch – Dipper stumbled backwards with a yell, and landed flat on his ass in the snow. Bill dropped to straddle his chest, wresting Dipper’s arms firmly underneath him. One of Bill’s hands was tight around Dipper’s neck, and the other was bringing the cigarette butt closer and closer to Dipper’s eye.

Dipper twisted his head away at the last second, and Bill paused, then drove the burning butt hard into the thin bit of clavicle exposed by Dipper’s stretched shirt collar. Dipper screamed.

“Now you know how that feels,” Bill said, and spat in Dipper’s eye. If talking to him wouldn’t work, violence had to. It had to!

Dipper panted as Bill held him down in the icy snow. “You know why I didn’t just shut your throat off  a minute ago? Like this?” Bill asked, his hand tightening over Dipper’s throat. “I wanted to hear you scream.” Dipper gasped in vain for air. Bill reveled in the feeling of the cold throat contracting under his equally cold fingers and used his free arm to dig into his pocket. He leisurely pulled out another cigarette and lit it. Every twenty seconds or so he would let up just slightly, let Dipper pull in some air, so he could stay conscious – it was a trick Bill had learned the last time Dipper had strangled _him_.

“Y’know, you’re right, Pine Tree. I know more than you. I know lots of things.” He lit the cigarette and leaned down into Dipper’s face, the ashen tip of the cigarette almost kissing Dipper’s lower lip. “ ** _LOTS OF THINGS._** ” Dipper was turning purple. He had to be in incredible pain, Bill appreciated, especially with the shadows of those rotten-fruit bruises from the hanging on his neck…. Bill found himself lost in Dipper’s eyes, then pulled away. He readjusted to better pin down Dipper’s right arm, which was trying to worm its way out from beneath them. “Uh-uh. You stay right there. And you _listen to me_. Now. I happen to be acclimating pretty quickly to this human form. Physically speaking, I think I can kick your scrawny-fleshed ass if I need to…. We’ve really just proved that. Nice, empirical evidence…. So, from now on, you’re not going to press me for _anything_. I say I’m gonna do something, you _do not get in the way_. Do you understand? Huh? Do ya?” He was biting hard on the cigarette butt now. His voice trembled as he leaned in one last time.

“You are going to _trust_ me,” he said, and blew a cloud of smoke into Dipper’s gasping mouth just as he removed his hand.

While Dipper was coughing, Bill stood, dusted the snow off his coat, and stepped to the side. He leaned on the porch railing and continued smoking quite casually. It took Dipper a moment to get up.

“How could you—“ he began hoarsely.

“You did. You did to me,” Bill said, not turning back. “Don't make me rehash the incident. We’re even now, Pine Tree.”

Dipper shuddered. Bill heard the door close behind him. He was left to watch the grey smoke curl out over the white snow. 


End file.
